I’ve felt particularly drawn to Sonnets and rhyme schemes and reflecting on the past lately. Maybe it’s because spring is bleeding into summer.

It’s the time of year again when the days stretch further, when 8 pm rolls around and sunlight is still lingering for one last conversation. I love it when the day sticks. And I love the night, too, but it marks the end of something—of day, of light—in more ways than one.

I was afraid of the dark for much of my childhood, though I was never quite sure what I feared. My parents would ask why the night scared me so deeply, and I could never find the words. Instead, I settled on monsters or murderers because they were easier to explain.

What really hid in the dark, I think, was death. The fear that everyone and everything I loved wouldn’t live to see tomorrow’s sunrise.

But I’ve experienced the loss I always feared. And somehow, it has left me unafraid of death. In fact, I’ve come to love the contrast of light and dark, day and night, for we cannot have one without the other. Maybe that’s what facing your fears, whether intentional or not, does.

Below is a sonnet for my younger self, the passage of time, and my father, most of all.

Sonnet for my Father

Can you see me now from where you are?
Behind the soft lit veil of narrowed time.
The dew kissed grass, the driveway light, the star
marked sky, the maple tree we used to climb.

I'm there, see me out the back porch window,
still as a deer on a summer night, my gaze
lost into the stretching pines. And you, so
alive, stand watching from inside, grays

sprouting from your head, glasses fixed off your
nose, seeing only deep blackness within 
woods. That's when I come running, quick before
it can take you. You ask me since when

I've been afraid of the dark. But I know,
night means the passing of day, and of you.

Writing prompt:

Give a Shakespearean sonnet a try! Perhaps a poem about a childhood summer memory.

This form consists of 14 lines broken into three quatrains and a final rhyming couplet, following the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Traditionally, each line contains ten syllables written in iambic pentameter, a rhythmic pattern of unstressed and stressed syllables that creates a heartbeat-like cadence when read aloud (so beautiful for a love poem, might I add).

Don’t stress it if counting syllables and meter feels intimidating. Many modern poets (myself included) bend the traditional rules while still honoring the sonnet’s spirit. Sometimes a little structure can actually make the writing process easier, I think.

You got this - happy writing!

I’ve felt so moved by the Holy Spirit lately.

It catches me off guard sometimes—goosebumps rising on my arms while I’m driving or praying or singing. The joy feels everywhere lately: the doves cooing in the morning, the warmth of sunlight cascading through my window, the conversations with friends that somehow never seem to end.

The other day, I was talking with some friends about participating in Mass in different countries, hearing something so familiar in another language. It made me think of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles and gave them the gift of many tongues to touch the hearts of thousands.

Lately, I’ve been praying, “Come, Holy Spirit, come,” before I write, before I go to work, before I see a friend. It feels like a small way to invite movement into my life, my heart. Asking for something to stir, no matter how small.

Below is a Ballade poem in honor of Pentecost, a French poetic form I’ve been exploring. It consists of three eight-line stanzas with the rhyme scheme ababbcbc, followed by an envoi with the rhyme scheme bcbc.

I hope you enjoy.

Come, Holy Spirit, come.
I have opened the windows of my heart
so the whistle of your breath, from
the depths of your light, may start
to push the stale air out; stir the parts
of my soul that must be reborn,
make sweet the bitter mind's tart,
make soft the thorns

that pierce my thoughts: the numb
judgement silence imparts.
No, come
Holy Spirit, dart
across fire started
doves, the sun torn
sky. Let art
pour forth, be sworn

straight from
the lips, the hearts
of the sheep that wait; of some
unlikely few, set apart
by heaven's court--
shoes worn,
minds new, ready to impart
your spirit; to adorn

the minds of those like me: one part
of a body; an arm, a bone,
a longing to stir and to start,
but never to scorn.

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There is a night you won’t know is fleeting while you’re in it.

It is a summer night in Pennsylvania—it’s always a summer night. And you keep returning here, without really trying.

The thick caress of August curls the wisps of hair around your cheeks. You’re ten and afraid of the dark and used to hiding from the world at this hour—fighting to keep your eyes open, unsure if sleep will mean death tonight.

You’re brushing your teeth, yellow light, pink tile, when they catch your gaze. From outside the small square shower window—sparks of electricity zapping the deep purple sky.

Your feet move before your mind can, pulling you out the back door. Bare feet in the dewy grass, then, and the sweet, burning smell of campfire and honeysuckle in the distance.

And you’re afraid of the night, but it isn’t dark here now. Fireflies float around, like buttercups sprouting from the sky.

You are alone, but surrounded. Listening to the quiet hush of cicadas. Feeling the drift of a wandering breeze. Watching light flare and dim against the bridge of your peach-colored nose.

They fly in unison, but each to their own path and, for the first time, you do not fear.

And there is a night you don’t know is fleeting while you’re in it—toes pressed into the dirt, hair tangled into your mother’s scrunchie, hands held open at your sides.

You pray one of these tiny creatures will land on you, if only for a second. Just enough to prove this is real. That you are here. That you belong inside this beauty instead of just witnessing it.

And it’s been so long now, so much distance from this place. Each summer, fewer fireflies return. And sometimes you wonder if you were even a witness at all.

Dear God,

Please let May be slow and sweet and soft. Like two swans drifting along a lily-covered lake, unsure where this stream leads, lost in the slow-flowing current of afternoon. Lily pads, flowers beginning to bloom—like Monet’s garden. Yes, let time stand still, let me stroll across the olive bridge, let clouds envelop the day. Paint them as you wish; let me fall into swirls of cotton candy rippling the dawn-kissed sky. Let me roll in a soft bed of grass, find love on a lonely hill—oh, Lord, give me time. Help me breathe deeply, savor the sweet taste of the air right now; cricket songs carried on the hush of evening, the notes of a sprightly piano, the whining violin missing its lover. Help me to exhale from deep behind my ribs; pray I may become part of this night breeze. God, let May course through my veins; seedlings blooming through the cracks of my palms. Let May be so deeply in me as I in it, so I do not blink and miss a moment more. For I have loved you ever since I’ve known you—I wish only to savor the light of your day. Let it start with May.

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Last week, I saw a Banana Slug for the first time in Santa Cruz.

My friends and I took turns counting them—fifty total along the train tracks that led down to the river.

Each time we saw one, a new variation of shape or size, we’d gather around, pointing and taking pictures. It feels silly, but I wondered what the slugs thought of us, of the forest, too. I wondered what the Banana Slug might say if given the chance.

What follows is a poem with this thought in mind.

Warning from a Banana Slug

So you want to be known?
Unique from the colony, drone
or queen quietly resenting 
the other. You lament

stolen praise, but I know what it is to 
be observed and not seen; dew
collecting on my back,
slithering along the track

of a derailed train. You always
find me--stop and gaze,
touch me but don't feel me,
don't linger long enough to see

where I've been, or where i'm going.
To the Garden of Eden flowing,
up jutting cliffs, between cracks
in the earth, the rails of these tracks,

any place I can hide 
from your lingering eyes.
You may think you want
to bask in the font

of perception. 
This forest is full of deception,
words hollowed in the wood--
do not mistake being known for being understood. 

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Elegy for a Dirty Stove

I’ve let go of worrying about the shape of my hips—
how my dress hangs off them,
whether you like the dips
in the fabric as it puckers at the hem.

I’ve learned it’s a gift to examine a dirty stove,
like the one that lives in my kitchen; freckles 
of tomato sauce on porcelain, bits of clove
from last night’s dinner and tomorrow’s lunch speckle 

the counter’s edge. Meals made for friends, for me, 
to fill the empty space that was once yours.
I don’t know what to say, so I will cook instead—sea
salt and parsley and the meals we’d talk over for hours.

I’d feed you until your stomach swelled 
and, now, I remember the beauty of a round, 
stomach, like lush hills we would’ve barrelled
down as children, if we knew each other then. Confound

by summer; plucking grass, blade by blade as the sun watched.
I don’t know how to let go of the what ifs, the could’ve beens, 
the empty space that is still yours. So I’ll up the stove a notch
instead. Drink warm soup till it drips down my chin,

leave more stains on the counter to not clean. 
They’re memories; remnants of us, and the meals that were
and the ones that will be. I’ve let go of worrying where you’ve been
and if you’ll be there 

to eat some more. 
I’ve learned it’s a gift to see 
things as they are, 
and not will them to be.  

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Spring cleaning sweeps me into the menagerie of past time.

Clothes once worn through with holes, my favorites, are now foreign to me. Belonging to someone else entirely. A version of me that has evaporated.

I fold and pack them neatly into plastic bags, for someone else to wear, to find stories in; first date dresses and going out jeans and slacks for new jobs.

I dust forgotten cabinets and find loose buttons and coins from my father’s collection. Books once gifted call my name; annotations from friends whispering through the pages. I am pulled into these conversations, but I know I must keep going, know there is so much left to wipe clean.

I haven’t even started on my heart, yet, rinsed it with holy water, purified my soul in His grace.

A season of newness and yet I am still old in spirit, and I wonder if I will ever learn to love as freely as He has, and I hope, if I scrub hard enough, I can.

He finds me, then, through the curtains, a steady light on my face. And holding my cheeks in His palms, he says: There is no need to scrub, I have washed you clean.

What a gift: the steady trickle of newness running through my hair, rubbing my shoulders on the way down to the earth. What a light: His gaze, his life.

For He is risen, and I am new.

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There’s not much as holy as a summer night drive on a back road. Just you and God and the street winding ahead; the plum sky reflecting in the pavement, tires swallowing broken white lines, stars peeking through canopies of trees. There’s prayer in all windows down, the warm breeze dancing through your hair, the smell of dew collecting on lawns. Your heart carries your voice through songs your mind has forgotten, your foot presses into the gas, your hands navigate the wheel, coasting through turns without minding street names. No, your mind has run away with the Spirit, has found solace in uncertainty, sight in the dark night, stillness and movement at once. There’s not much as holy as suspending in time; nowhere to be and nothing to rush to. You reach a stop sign, your foot finding the brake, slowing to a still, and you hear it then as the wind falls from your ears; the deafening presence of quiet, the destination. And you remember a hike in the woods, many months ago, sequoia trees standing all around, their dense trunks blocking all noise. You pressed your back into one of the tree bodies, rested your head against his chest, felt the peace that only stillness can bring; back against the body of the church, moonlight dancing through stained glass, the gold sun of the monstrance on the altar. You could stand for hours soaking in this light, you could drive forever on a night like this.

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Do you like going to the beach by yourself?

Time spent alone, just you and your thoughts and the roar of the ocean. Do you think about dying, and the noncomittal ways of the world, how the sun warms your toes, but the ocean is too cold to meet; how the seasons change, and dormant bulbs resurrect to bloom?

Do you dream of summers in Greece? Of spritzes and fuchsia flowers and blinding white houses that line cobblestone streets. Does Mama Mia break your heart in a way you’re afraid to admit—a tight-lipped smile and shallow breaths—

Are you as afraid of me as I am of you?

I don’t know you, but I know you; the smell of your vanilla perfume and the way you stare at the night sky on the street by yourself outside of your first apartment, wondering where we came from and if the stars know we are here and if we see our loved ones again in heaven.

I don’t know you, but I know you, the fear of being too much like me and the comfort of knowing you’re unable to undo our similarity, the shape of our hips and tidepools of excessive love in our hearts.

You put on my clothes and wonder if you look like I did at your age, and wish you could’ve known me then, and grieve for the parts of who I am that you will never know.

It’s a blessing and a fault to love so hard that you miss someone you’ve never met, to fear losing someone who still walks this earth, to cry to God to protect them when nothing is wrong.

I don’t know you, but I know you. I don’t see you, but I sense you. In as many ways as you are me, I am you, and I love you.

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Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas has been stuck in my head this week.

A Villanelle about fighting death with fervor (a charming sentiment for my daily thoughts, I know).

“Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

I’m obsessed with the poem’s haunting resilience; its commitment to clinging to the life we are gifted.

The rhyme scheme plays in a ghostly sing-song in my head, and I can practically hear the narrator’s urgency; so much so that he seems to be dying himself.

Like he would die to get his point across.

“Do not go gentle into that good night.

rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

I’ve never attempted a Villanelle before, but this poem pushed me to try to write one.

According to Poetry Foundation, a Villanelle is a French poetic form featuring five tercets and one quatrain with a final couplet. The first and third lines of the tercets repeat throughout and ultimately end the poem.

If you’ve never read Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, I highly recommend you do. And if you’ve never written a Villanelle, give it a try.

Cheers to spring around the corner, new beginnings, and new poetry forms.

We Can Drive to a Warmer Place

I miss the lines that frame your face—
Meet me where river bleeds into roadway,
We’ll drive to a warmer place

where mourning doves coo and hummingbirds chase,
beads of pollen speckle the bay—
I miss the lines that frame your face,

I miss your voice’s quiet grace,
level like a lake at summer's end, pray
we can drive to a warmer place—

If I should need to plead my case;
winter wind is just a memory, I'll say,
here, it cannot wipe the smile off your face.

I do my best to retrace
the steps that turned me far away,
so many miles from our place;

the wood of the coffee table, the dusty bookcase,
snow lining the road, whispering please stay—
I miss the lines that frame your face,
we’ll drive to a warmer place.

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There’s a piece of me left on the train from Rome to Manarola—

the sea becoming one with the sky, the two hours to think, my temple pressed against the sun-warmed window, the seat across from me empty.

Everything seemed so vibrant that morning, the green shrubs lining the tracks, spilling over the cliff, reaching toward the ocean in a morning stretch, awakened by the first sign of warmth that April.

I’d spent so much of my time abroad feeling homesick, adjusting to the experience like treading into cold water, one step at a time. But my friend, you should’ve seen her, one night, drunk on the ancient city, leaping into the Tiber River—a night with a chill that could cut straight through you.

I thought she was crazy to jump feet-first like that, to dip in at all. But I keep coming back to that night, to the story, bringing it up to anyone I can to see if they, too, think it was out of the ordinary.

I’ve gathered that some people are divers and some are crawlers, some fall headfirst without a second glance, and some tiptoe through life. And I, despite my best efforts, am the latter, though I so desperately want to be the former.

I connected the ends of this thought on the train ride to Manarola, as the cart swayed left and right and left and right and I was just a weekend from leaving Europe and only just traveling on my own for the first time, only just accustomed to the water, only just warmed to the current, only just decided I could stay.

And isn’t that how these things go, for us crawlers; decades of only justs, chasing fleeting feelings forever. Having only realized we are ready for something when it is gone.

When I close my eyes at night, I can still feel it: the rattle of the train against my cheek, the warmth of the sun through the window, the promise of one weekend left to explore. I think I’d be braver if I had just one more chance to go.

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Pink

Like the blush of my cheeks while I run — the glowing sunset before me, the roses lining the street. Or Valentine’s cards sprawled over the table at my friend’s house, the sprinkles adorning the cookies waiting in the kitchen, the smell of vanilla perfume on a girl’s wrist. We never pick a romance book to read at book club, not enough to dissect, we say, but we always want to — like that feeling that dances along your sternum, the longing of lost love, and the promise of more to share. Strawberry wine and sharing our secrets. Like Claire de Lune, spring is around the corner, the sun will rise tomorrow. Reflections of cotton candy clouds on the ocean in the early hours of the morning, the feeling that God has created this moment just for you, just in seeing you, knowing you. Or sunsets in Rome, the sky kissing the Pantheon, the oil paint smudged into museum hallways, the floral satin dress my friend and I traded every weekend. Like a priest’s rose vestments, the breath of joy before Easter. Like every iteration of my childhood bedroom, like my adult one, like my lipstick, like my heart. It’s always there, everywhere, finding me.

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I find you on the Mission Bay Trail, fuzz rising from your back like a cartoonish mustache, inching your small, determined body across the pavement. Twelve eyes, they say, and still the poorest vision: only able to sense light and dark, only scent and instinct to lead you.

And yet, here you are. A two-inch-long miracle, dragging yourself across the sun-drenched concrete beside a vast bay you will never see. The sky broader than you will ever know.

I recognize you. I do. I know what it is to move forward without knowing where forward leads, to follow brightness because it is brightness, to trust the body when the mind cannot see.

I was once ten years old, in the suburbs of Pennsylvania, a sticky July evening humming with cicadas, fireflies dancing across the sky, filling the dark with yellow light. My heart thudded as I leapt and cupped my hands around one of them, delicate wings and body held close.

But there was no tickle of legs in my palms, and, when I opened my hands, like a cursed keepsake box, I found only death: the firefly squished, its golden dust smeared into the creases of my skin. How suddenly night became darker without him. How easily light disappears.

So I watch you carefully now, brave, unknowing thing. You push on while bikers and runners, and even I could end you without noticing, without ever knowing a life had evaporated beneath us. And still, you follow the pale stream of path, unaware of the beauty and danger that surrounds you.

And I can see it all: where you’ve come from and where you’re going, the breeze lifting off the water, the crew boats cutting through the tide, the mercy of shade, the vibrant green of grass.

I watch as you reach the bank, slip into the living world of leaves, burrow into a sunlit patch, and rest.

Only then do I move on. Only then do I let you be.

The poem that inspired this post: Not Horses by Natalie Shapiro

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I’m holding a small spiral shell on a beach in Maine.

It’s the last day of my family’s camping trip up the coast, and I have nowhere else to be. Nothing else to do but scour the beach for broken pieces of the sea.

The shell is purple, edged in silver, and I turn it slowly between my index finger and thumb, studying its curve, its delicate precision.

Its symmetry stops me. All around me on the shore lie its sisters and brothers—scattered, identical, repeating the same elegant pattern. And suddenly, my mind drifts back to sophomore-year algebra: the Fibonacci sequence. The mathematical formula I learned and promptly forgot.

According to BBC:

“The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers which begins with 1 and 1. From there, you add the previous two numbers in the sequence together to get the next number. So 1 + 1 = 2, 1 + 2 = 3, 2 + 3 = 5, and so on. This gives you a sequence that looks like 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, etc.”
—BBC Bitesize, The beauty of maths: Fibonacci and the Golden Ratio

What strikes me most is how insistently this sequence appears in nature: in flowers, in fruit, in shells like the one resting in my hand.

Take the sunflower, for example. To fit the most seeds on its head without gaps, the seeds don’t form straight lines. They grow in spirals, each seed offset at a precise angle from the previous one.

“…The perfect degree of turn needs to be an irrational number, which can’t be easily approximated by a fraction, and the answer is the Golden Ratio.”
—BBC Bitesize

It’s everywhere, really. In our eyes. Our ears. In Sanddollars and the Mona Lisa and the Milky Way, all the same.

And when I see this, I see God. Unmistakably.

There’s no escaping the intimacy of His design—the deliberate craft and care bestowed on each of us, into the food we eat, the flowers we stop to admire, the shells we bend down to pick up without knowing why.

I toss the spiral shell back to the sand, watch the sea catch it, tugging it out with the tide. I know there will be plenty more to admire in my lifetime.

Below is a short poem written in Fibonacci form. The first two lines contain one syllable each, followed by lines of three, five, and eight syllables. And who better to write such a poem about than God Himself?

I hope you enjoy it. And more than that, I hope you notice the beauty around you—and the beauty within you.

Rooted

And
still
I grow,
steadily,
through these rugged weeds—
His bleeding hand planted the seed.
Will you let Him do for you what He has done for me?

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January 16th, I sit in the sun at Lestat’s, reveling in the slight burn settling into the back of my neck.

It’s strange to be reminded of summer in January—of many summers ago, when I was ripe in the age of girlhood without knowing it was fleeting.

That feeling of shared girlhood is still with me, though it’s shifted to womanhood, I think. And I don’t think it will ever fully disappear, but part of me fears time will strip its memory from my thoughts, slowly. That growing up will push it further and further away.

The prose poem below is about this feeling, this fear. I hope you enjoy.

I’m Afraid I’ll Forget 

the lounge chair that summer—its plastic resin body clinging to mine, etching red lines into my skin. the sun racing the sky in minutes, it seemed, light dancing across the pool’s ripples as if time itself were skipping. my book’s pages drifting right to left, right to left, and the girl beside me holding the same copy, paper scraping our thumbs in shared rhythm.

time was liquid that July. it wrapped itself around our floating bodies, lifted us, swallowed us whole at once. we were nineteen, teetering on the narrow edge of childhood, tripping into adulthood—who we might become kissing who we had been, neither willing to let go just yet.

we stayed until the sun slid low, skin crisped, bellies full of sandwich crusts and bubbly water, the day glazed in honeyed light. girls flocked to the apartment at dusk like homing doves—burnt hair, sticky-sweet perfume, windows thrown open, warm air enchanting the room. We traded clothes, traded hopes for the night, whispered about who we’d grow into, and the versions of ourselves time would not let us keep.

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Palindromes can be read word-for-word or line-by-line, forward and backward. My poem below follows the line-by-line form so that it can be started from either of the bolded lines. I hope you enjoy!

Would you like me if you knew me?
We could be friends–
Both of us twenty-three, in some alternate world;
book in each hand
The same,
The Body
Swollen knuckles, ringless fingers,
flipping pages, full notebooks–
“Let’s meet over coffee?”
Two pairs of overalls,
Hair chopped above the collarbone,
And it all feels so familiar–
“I like your jeans,” you say, 
7am, cold morning,
lightwash denim, stiff like starch,
the kind you have to squeeze in,
passed down from college years;
a challenge, and we love the curse—
Fitting into the same clothes each year;
Good to change, bad to grow.
One daughter, one mother, one in the same.
A picture is taken:
Swollen, bursting with life,
I push my belly out, so it’s all I can see.

• Reading rec: The Body by Stephen King

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I am enjoying the storm from a cozy coffee shop, sandwiched between two friends, observing a first date to our left. It doesn’t seem to be going well (the date) and has made me reflect on love and how much we are willing to sacrifice for it.

Below is a poem I wrote many rainy days ago about this idea for a spoken word poetry class in college. These words inspired me to write a short story with a similar theme months later, and it is near and dear to my heart.

I hope you’re somewhere dry and cozy as you read this. If you resonate with the words below, I hope you find comfort. And I hope we can all find the kind of love that feels like walking on solid ground, cushioned grass between our toes, the sun shining with approval.

Happy Sunday, and happy reading.

Hydroplaning

It happens when you’re driving 
on a San Diego highway after rainfall,
when you haven’t seen a drop in months
and oil bonds with neglected pavement, 
sprawling the road with a film like ice 
on a black December morning. 
And you wish you’d stayed 
with the boy with tousled hair,
back in the comfort of your room, 
which you see now as you grip the wheel,
as your tires fail to grip the road—
and you float like a child learning to ice-skate,
hands out pleading for someone to catch you 
before you crash. Perhaps it’s your inexperience 
that led to the spiral, or a lapse in judgment 
that caused you to speed—
what were you rushing for?
To return to the unfinished conversation 
with his hands, resume place in the comfort 
of his arms, listen to the murmur of his heart, 
to the secrets he whispers in his sleep, 
or catch him before he loses interest, 
prove you’re the only option, 
you’re just an option–
and amidst all doubt, suddenly, 
your face lies between his palms, 
and his eyebrows gather
like they’re longing to kiss, 
and you can practically taste 
the warm honey of his eyes 
and, in an honest breath, he says 
you’re special 
and that’s all it takes to cushion the blow, 
to set off the airbags and reach the guard rail—
and with a crash it’s over 
and your body is littered with purple and blue 
and your heart lies in the middle of the 8 
but somehow you know to thank 
the rain and oil 
that brought you here.

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I come from a lineage of unknowing. Of Irish blood, unsure of which city we are from, or what traditions live in those towns. A lineage of constant searching—of throwing guesses at the wall and seeing what sticks. Of identity voyages without a map, of wondering. Of smiling in the face of unkindness, and giving love when there’s none left in our hearts; cutting the cold, beatless thing once more just to see what bleeds. And my mother fed me breakfast every morning, even when I didn’t say thank you. Even when I took a bite and walked away. Arthritis whispers into my mother’s hands from years of continuous motion—of breakfast, lunch, and dinner; of Christmas presents and birthday décor; of gripping the steering wheel to work and back and to after-school practices; of studying late at night when everyone else was long asleep—still searching for the knowing. Some inherit land; my mother passed down the gift of being unsure, and loving anyway.

P.S. Thank you to my mom, who reads every Substack I write; your continuous love and dedication keep me ever inspired.

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I’m walking down 30th Street on one of those perfect Saturdays—the whole world awake, the streets buzzing like a colony whose queen has just returned. Jazz spills from knick-knack shops, friends pass by with fresh coffees in hand, and I think I could stroll like this forever.

The sun touches every inch of the sky—my shoulders, the pavement—when I see it: a glimmer of copper, blinding. A penny, face up, calling my name.

A version of me before you would’ve bent down without hesitation, pleading for something, anything, like this.

I’d pry luck from the cracks in the streets like a pearl diver sinks into the dark, feeling along the ocean floor for something precious. Who then, having found the treasure, realizes she is too far down and cannot breathe and, trying desperately to resurface, kicks too hard and loses all vision and sense of direction, spinning, lost in the sea—

And you!

Right there all along, if only I had looked up. But my gaze was glued to the empty sidewalk. Overjoyed by the promise of rusted copper, a single cent, while heaven and earth were waiting at my fingertips.

I count my blessings and count my steps, trudging on, against the urge, giving in to glance back once more.

The penny is gone. A young girl, beaming, hand in her pocket, walks away from me.

(^me throwing a penny in the Trevi Fountain)

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What is it in his gaze—
endless, stretching like the ocean before you,
his eyes bright and cool,
the October sky,
his hand on yours, 
the tide on the sand, 
sinking together—
and no words are spoken 
but a constant sound, expectant;
the waves rolling off the coast,
and you remember that day on the beach,
many months ago,
when you saw a child find a hermit crab
without a home;
its shell-less pink body vulnerable,
seabirds diving to catch it, and the child,
without hesitation,
swatting away the hungry animals,
a small spiral shell in hand
and, once the sky had grown quiet,
placing the shell softly 
in the sand by the crab,
letting it take its time,
gesturing to the new home
as if to say, “go ahead,
it’s safe,
you are meant to be here"—
his thumb rubs yours, 
his gaze on you still,
and you are lost but found,
the cool air somehow
warming your cheeks,
the empty beach full
of that unnameable,
golden thing
that follows 
whenever he is near.

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